Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to Mr. Patterson.  But that gentleman’s usual profound melancholy appeared to be intensified by the hilarity of his companion.  He only sighed deeply and rubbed his leg with the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction.

“Well! go on, then,” said the woman, laughing and nudging him.  “Go on—­introduce me—­can’t you?  Don’t stand there like a tombstone.  You won’t?  Well, I’ll introduce myself.”  She laughed again, and then, with an excellent imitation of Patterson’s lugubrious accents, said, “Mr. Spencer Tucker’s wife that is, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Spencer Tucker’s sweetheart that was!  Hold on!  I said that was.  For true as I stand here, ma’am—­and I reckon I wouldn’t stand here if it wasn’t true—­I haven’t set eyes on him since the day he left you.”

“It’s the gospel truth, every word,” said Patterson, stirred into a sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker’s white and rigid face.  “It’s the frozen truth, and I kin prove it.  For I kin swear that when that there young woman was sailin’ outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my bar-room; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give him a hoss and set him in his road to Monterey that very night.”

“Then, where is he now?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly facing them.

They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs. Tucker.  Then both together replied slowly and in perfect unison, “That’s—­what—­we—­want—­to—­know.”  They seemed so satisfied with this effect that they as deliberately repeated, “Yes—­that’s—­what—­we—­want—­to—­know.”

Between the shock of meeting the partner of her husband’s guilt and the unexpected revelation to her inexperience, that in suggestion and appearance there was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that was really shocking in the woman—­between the extravagant extremes of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty suppressed an hysterical laugh.

“That’s the way to take it,” said the woman, putting her own good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker’s expression.  “Now, look here!  I’ll tell you all about it,” She carefully selected the most comfortable chair, and sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her lap.  “Well, I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo, calculating that your husband would join the ship just inside the Heads.  That was our arrangement, but if anything happened to prevent him, he was to join me at Acapulco.  Well! he didn’t come aboard, and we sailed without him.  But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but his boat was capsized.  There now, don’t be alarmed! he wasn’t drowned, as Patterson can swear to—­no, catch him! not a hair of him was hurt.  But I—­I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico alone, without a cent to bless me.  For true as you live, that hound